Did they talk about Hard Eight with PSH? I was surprised they did with Gwenyth Paltrow.

I watched it over the weekend (very interesting)... but I don't remember them going into "Hard Eight" at all. It was old though, they never touched on... "Punch Drunk Love".

They pretty much started to praise Paul Thomas Anderson and how he landed the role as "Scotty J." in "Boogie Nights" before showing the clip where he shows Dirk his new car and tries to kiss him. But no, no "Hard Eight" discussion.

As a side note, the person's house I was over at... had something wrong with their TV. It kept popping and turning off and on... every thirty seconds. I would get into the conversation and then... BAM!... if's off. I may have missed something about "Hard Eight" during his conversation with, James Lipton but I doubt it.

They did talk about Magnolia... and he mentioned that PTA wrote the part just for him, which is why he's called "Phil".

I'm sure we all knew that. Go figure.

One really cool thing about Philip Seymour Hoffman is that he takes different roles of everytime... A lot of people in the audience respected him for that.

Philip Seymor Hoffman is going to be on conan on Friday Jan 10th. It's actually a rerun but I didn't see it when it originally aired so I'm not sure what he was promoting. Gwyneth Paltrow is also on the same night. It should be good.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, the favorite to take home the best actor Oscar next month, says he never would have reached such heights if he didn't get sober 16 years ago.

Hoffman, whose performance as Truman Capote in "Capote" has drawn enormous praise, speaks in an interview on CBS News' "60 Minutes" to air Sunday (7 p.m. EST) about nearly succumbing to substance abuse when he was younger.

The 38-year-old actor says that after graduating from New York University's drama school, he fell into a fast-paced city social life.

"It was all that (drugs and alcohol), yeah. It was anything I could get my hands on ... I liked it all," Hoffman says.

He changed quickly, however.

"I went (to rehab), I got sober when I was 22 years old," says Hoffman. "You get panicked ... and I got panicked for my life."

Hoffman's first notable movie role was "Scent of a Woman" in 1992. He gradually became one the most critically acclaimed character actors after films like "Boogie Nights," "Happiness" and "Cold Mountain."

He's glad fame didn't come until he had cleaned himself up.

"I have so much empathy for these young actors that are 19 and all of a sudden they're beautiful and famous and rich," he says. "I'm like, `Oh my God, I'd be dead.'"

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

Fresh off his best actor Oscar win Sunday, Philip Seymour Hoffman has signed on to star in the dramedy "The Savages" for Fox Searchlight Pictures. He will join Laura Linney in the film, which will be directed by Tamara Jenkins, who also wrote the screenplay.

The film revolves around a pair of adult siblings (Hoffman, Linney) who are obliged to care for their estranged and ailing elderly father who never took care of them. As they do, they confront the legacy of their upbringing and the realities of familial responsibility.

This Is That's Ted Hope and Anne Carey are producing alongside Fred and Erica Westheimer, while Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor and Ad Hominem's Jim Burke are executive producing. Fox Searchlight's Claudia Lewis and Joshua Deighton are shepherding the project for the specialty label.

Filming is scheduled to begin in April in New York.

Jenkins, whose credits include "Slums of Beverly Hills," said it's a filmmaker's dream to "be making a movie with two of the most exciting actors working today."

Said Lewis: "We are thrilled to be making another film with one of Searchlight's original auteurs. Tamara's unique sense of humor and emotional sensitivity, coupled with the undeniable talents of Linney, Hoffman and our outstanding producers, will give us another sharply observed true-to-life comedy about the contemporary American family."

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

According to Variety, the “Capote” star has been signed for two new biggies, “Charlie Wilson’s War” with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and “Before the Devil Knows Your Dead” with Ethan Hawke and Albert Finney.

“War”, from director Mike Nichols (“Regarding Henry”), is based on the book of the same name, about a rogue congressman and CIA agent (Hoffman) who found the means to secretly arm rebels to fight against invading Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the early 1980s.

“Dead”, [from director Sidney Lumet] about two brothers who decide to rob their parents’ jewellery store, starts shooting in New York next month. In addition to Hawke and Finney, Oscar Winner Marisa Tomei is also onboard.

It’s also believed J.J Abrams (and probably Paramount) are keen to have Hoffman front-up for their new “Star Trek” film. Recent rumours pegged him playing a doctor in the film.

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

Philip Seymour Hoffman makes the world his stageThe actor may have three films due to open, but the theater keeps him grounded.Source: Los Angeles Times

PHILIP Seymour Hoffman looks more like the rumpled New York theater director that he is than the Oscar-winning star he's been playing for the last year and a half. He's dressed in dark, nondescript clothes, his red hair is wild, his face is unshaven, and those eyes that modulate so precisely from role to role are clear. You wouldn't know he was famous at all, were it not for the fact that he's in a midtown hotel room decorated with posters from his new film, or that an assistant sits down a few feet away after fetching him a pack of Camel Lights.

He's often the best thing in bad films ("Along Came Polly," "Red Dragon") or a small, integral part of wonderful films ("Almost Famous," "Happiness," "Boogie Nights"). In his body of work, which includes winning the best actor Oscar for 2005's "Capote," he's pulled off the clever trick of becoming a leading actor with the versatility of a character actor.

This year, he stars in three upcoming films. "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (which opens in limited release Friday and Nov. 2 in Los Angeles) is the 44th film by Sidney Lumet, an entertaining but relentlessly downbeat affair concerning two brothers who conspire to rob their parents' jewelry store. Next month he's featured with Laura Linney in Tamara Jenkins' affecting "The Savages," an equally downbeat story about siblings dealing with their father's dementia. And on Christmas Day comes "Charlie Wilson's War," alongside fellow Oscar winners Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

He's also stayed very close to the New York theater world, acting as a co-artistic director with the LAByrinth Theater Company. While he's promoting the Lumet movie, his LAByrinth colleagues are downtown at the Public Theater on Lafayette Street, rehearsing a play. "It's opening night there tonight, and I'm going down there later," he says. "We're opening 'A View From 151st Street.' It's like our office out there, where we do a lot of our chatting and smoking." It's clear, as he puts a cigarette out in a half-empty Styrofoam cup of cold coffee, where he'd rather be right now.

HE runs in a pretty small theater world. Part of what attracted him to the political drama "Charlie Wilson's War" was the fact that it was written by Aaron Sorkin ("The script reads like a play.") and directed by Mike Nichols ("The Graduate," "Silkwood"), who so memorably directed Hoffman in a Central Park production of "The Seagull" in 2001.

In "Devil," he stars with Marisa Tomei and Ethan Hawke. One of the more compelling performances in "Devil" is by Brian F. O'Byrne in a small role as an Irish thug. O'Byrne was nominated for a Tony for his lead role in the Broadway production of "Doubt," which is the next film role Hoffman will be taking. "Well, that is the best cameo in the film," Hoffman says about O'Byrne in "Devil." (It's the kind of cameo Hoffman would have taken just a few years ago.) "Me, Ethan, Marisa, Michael Shannon and Brian, we've all been banging around New York for years now and we've all kind of known each other a long time. But I will call Brian up and ask him about that part."

Two scenes in "Devil" are particularly affecting, both with Hoffman and Tomei's onscreen marriage disintegrating. ("Sidney and I thought about those scenes in exactly the same way, without saying a word, which is a very good sign," Hoffman says.) Six years ago, Hoffman and Tomei were onstage together in "The 24-Hour Plays," where he also played a bully quietly imploding. "That was a play where I don't think he was a bully on the page," he remembers, "but I had forgotten all of my lines and I just pulled out every trick in the book. I had the first line and then I didn't remember anything so I just tried to be as entertaining as possible."

Like Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich, Hoffman has emerged as a successful film actor who stays closely grounded to the theater. But how does the enormity of a project such as "Mission Impossible III" or "Charlie Wilson's War" compare with arranging a reading for an audience of a few dozen people? "It seems helpful and right," he says. "I'm not trying to do anything different from one environment to the next. What I'm trying to do on set with 'Charlie Wilson's War' is the same thing I'm trying to do in the theater: trying to work well, trying to make something work. And that's exactly the same thing we're trying to do at the Public. As long as you can keep that in perspective, that's really all it is."

The focus with Hoffman is all about the work, but he is instantly identifiable as a New Yorker. He grew up in upstate New York and still recalls his mother, whom he paid tribute to when he won his Oscar, bringing him downtown to study at NYU. He tried living in L.A. for a couple of years, going on auditions and taking acting classes. He remembers driving up Nichols Canyon once with a friend with some cheese and crackers on the armrest. Leaning down to take a bite, "we sideswiped this brick wall badly and scratched up the car pretty good, and bricks were flying into the road and my friend said, 'You almost killed us for some cheese and crackers.' " Shortly after, he moved back to New York for good.

IN person, Hoffman smiles more than you might expect, given the seriousness of his roles and the acclaim he's received. He also laughs at himself a disarming amount, especially when he tells one story about an early role in 1995's "Twister" when he accidentally put on a few pounds due to excitement over craft services (if you look closely, you can actually see him gaining weight from one scene to the next). "I did gain about 20 pounds in that movie," he recalls. "I'd sleep all morning and wake up and have a big lunch and shoot a scene and then have a few hot dogs. The continuity on that is awful because my body weight changed so drastically. I gain weight pretty easily," he says, shrugging.

And you do see Hoffman all over downtown New York, shuffling along, usually alone or with his family in tow, between Washington Square Park and the Public Theater. He's a familiar sight in the neighborhood and, for an actor of his stature, surprisingly accessible. "It's my home!" he says, a little more spirited. "I can't change that, I have to live where I live. If I had to start changing what I do, I would have to move, because otherwise what's the point? The point of living in the Village is to walk out and get your coffee and sit on a stoop. The beauty of living here is being out amongst people doing what you do. And I'm still able to do that pretty much."

He has a method to his celebrity: "If you go west of 7th Avenue, that's where the paparazzi are, but the minute you go east they don't follow you anymore." Hoffman turned 40 this summer, and the future is looking particularly bright. In the last few months, he's wrapped production on screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, "Synecdoche, New York," and directed a play in Australia and is now preparing to film "Doubt," alongside Meryl Streep, after which he'll direct a play in New York. "I really don't see me leaving New York to work unless I absolutely have to, because my kids are so young."

It's when he's asked about Charlie Kaufman, though, that he really perks up. In the film, due out next year, Hoffman plays . . . a rumpled New York theater director attempting to build an exact scale replica of New York City.

"Kaufman is terrific," he says immediately. "He's just so bright and one of the most deep, deep feeling and thinking people you'll ever meet. That was hard material, incredibly complex." He stops himself for a moment. "I'm trying not to be overly effusive but I can't say enough. I adore him and I'm so glad he asked me to do it. That was one of those things, where you just say, thank God he asked me to do it!"

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

Wilson Joel: Do you have the yellow pages?Cashier at Pancake House: Customer copy out of the phone book.Wilson Joel: It's all torn to shreds.Cashier at Pancake House: I apologize, but that's our customer copy.Wilson Joel: Can I use your copy?Cashier at Pancake House: Sorry, convenient store next door might have one.Wilson Joel: But, you have one.Cashier at Pancake House: Sir, I'm sorry. Try next door.Wilson Joel: I just got finished eating your bad pancakes and got my plane stolen out of my car in your parking lot.Cashier at Pancake House: Want me to call the police? I can call the police.Wilson Joel: No, I just want to see the yellow pages.Cashier at Pancake House: What are you looking for?Wilson Joel: Planes.Cashier at Pancake House: Planes?Wilson Joel: Yea, model planes. You know remote control planes?Cashier at Pancake House: Toy Planes?Wilson Joel: Yea, toy planes.Cashier at Pancake House: You're not gonna find anything like that.Wilson Joel: Let me look... let me look.Cashier at Pancake House: You're not going to find it.Wilson Joel: Haha, yea you see that? You see that? One of your fucking friends stole my plane. Somebody who eats the bad food in this place all the time. That plane is going to ruin this whole place.

“If I had to hold up the most heavily fortified bank in America,” Bolaño says, “I’d take a gang of poets. The attempt would probably end in disaster, but it would be beautiful.”